History is a slow but steady progress of emancipation
from the chains which sin has forged. The institution of slavery was
universal in Europe during the middle ages among barbarians as well as
among civilized nations. It was kept up by natural increase, by war,
and by the slave-trade which was carried on in Europe more or less till
the fifteenth century, and in America till the eighteenth. Not a few
freemen sold themselves into slavery for debt, or from poverty. The
slaves were completely under the power of their masters, and had no
claim beyond the satisfaction of their physical wants. They could not
bear witness in courts of justice. They could be bought and sold with
their children like other property. The marriage tie was disregarded,
and marriages between freemen and slaves were null and void. In the
course of time slavery was moderated into serfdom, which was attached
to the soil. Small farmers often preferred that condition to freedom,
as it secured them the protection of a powerful nobleman against
robbers and invaders. The condition of the serfs, however, during the
middle ages was little better than that of slaves, and gave rise to
occasional outbursts in the Peasant Wars, which occurred mostly in
connection with the free preaching of the Gospel (as by Wiclif and the
Lollards in England, and by Luther in Germany), but which were
suppressed by force, and in their immediate effects increased the
burdens of the dependent classes. The same struggle between capital and
labor is still going on in different forms.

The mediaeval church inherited the patristic views
of slavery. She regarded it as a necessary evil, as a legal right based
on moral wrong, as a consequence of sin and a just punishment for it.
She put it in the same category with war, violence, pestilence, famine,
and other evils. St. Augustin, the greatest theological authority of
the Latin church, treats slavery as disturbance of the normal condition
and relation. God did not, he says, establish the dominion of man over
man, but only over the brute. He derives the word servus, as usual,
from servare (to save the life of captives of war doomed to death), but
cannot find it in the Bible till the time of the righteous Noah, who
gave it as a punishment to his guilty son Ham; whence it follows that
the word came “from sin, not from nature.” He also holds that the
institution will finally be abolished when all iniquity shall
disappear, and God shall be all in all.336336De Civit. Dei, 1. XIX. c. 15. ”Nomen [servus]
culpa meruit, non natura … Prima servitutis causa
peccatum est, ut homo homini conditionis vinculo subderetur quod non
fuit nisi Deo judicante, apud quem non est iniquitas.” He thinks it
will continue with the duties prescribed by the apostles, donec
transeat iniquitas, et evacuetur omnis principatus, et potestas humana,
et sit Deus omnia in omnibus..” Chrysostom taught substantially the
same views, and derived from the sin of Adam a threefold servitude and
a threefold tyranny, that of the husband over the wife, the master over
the slave, and the state over the subjects. Thomas Aquinas, the
greatest of the schoolmen, ” did not see in slavery either difference
of race or imaginary inferiority or means of government, but only a
scourge inflicted on humanity by the sins of the first man” (Balmes, p.
112). But none of these great men seems to have had an idea that
slavery would ever disappear from the earth except with sin itself.
Cessante causa, cessat effectus. See vol. III.
115-121.

The church exerted her great moral power not so
much towards the abolition of slavery as the amelioration and removal
of the evils connected with it. Many provincial Synods dealt with the
subject, at least incidentally. The legal right of holding slaves was
never called in question, and slaveholders were in good and regular
standing. Even convents held slaves, though in glaring inconsistency
with their professed principle of equality and brotherhood. Pope
Gregory the Great, one of the most humane of the popes, presented
bondservants from his own estates to convents, and exerted all his
influence to recover a fugitive slave of his brother.337337 Epist. X. 66; IX. 102. See these and other passages in
Overbeck, Verhältniss der alten Kirche zur
Sklaverei, in his
“Studien zur Gesch. der alten Kirche” (1875) p. 211 sq. Overbeck,
however, dwells too much on the proslavery sentiments of the fathers,
and underrates the merits of the church for the final abolition of
slavery. A reform Synod of Pavia, over which Pope
Benedict VIII., one of the forerunners of Hildebrand, presided (a.d.
1018), enacted that sons and daughters of clergymen, whether from
free-women or slaves, whether from legal wives or concubines, are the
property of the church, and should never be emancipated.338338 Hefele IV. 670. No pope has ever declared slavery
incompatible with Christianity. The church was strongly conservative,
and never encouraged a revolutionary or radical movement looking
towards universal emancipation.

But, on the other hand, the Christian spirit
worked silently, steadily and irresistibly in the direction of
emancipation. The church, as the organ of that spirit, proclaimed ideas
and principles which, in their legitimate working, must root out
ultimately both slavery and tyranny, and bring in a reign of freedom,
love, and peace. She humbled the master and elevated the slave, and
reminded both of their common origin and destiny. She enjoined in all
her teaching the gentle and humane treatment of slaves, and enforced it
by the all-powerful motives derived from the love of Christ, the common
redemption and moral brotherhood of men. She opened her houses of
worship as asylums to fugitive slaves, and surrendered them to their
masters only on promise of pardon.339339 Synod of Clermont, a.d.549.
Hefele III. 5; comp. II. 662. She protected the freedmen in the enjoyment of
their liberty. She educated sons of slaves for the priesthood, with the
permission of their masters, but required emancipation before
ordination.340340 Fifth Synod of Orleans, 549; Synod of Aachen, 789; Synod of
Francfurt, 794. See Hefele III. 3, 666, 691. If ordination took place
without the master’s consent, he could reclaim the
slave from the ranks of the clergy. Hefele IV. 26. Marriages of
freemen with slaves were declared valid if concluded with the knowledge
of the condition of the latter.341341 Hefele III. 574, 575, 611. The first example was set by
Pope Callistus (218-223), who was himself formerly a slave, and gave
the sanction of the Roman church to marriages between free Christian
ladies and slaves or lowborn men. Hippolytus, Philosoph. IX. 12
(p. 460 ed. Duncker and Schneidewin). This was contrary to Roman law,
and disapproved even by Hippolytus. Slaves could not be forced to labor on Sundays.
This was a most important and humane protection of the right to rest
and worship.342342 The 16th Synod of Toledo, 693, passed the following canon:
“If a slave works on Sunday by command of his master, the slave becomes
free, and the master is punished to pay 30 solidi. If the slave works
on Sunday without command of his master, he is whipped or must pay fine
for his skin. If a freeman works on Sunday, he loses his liberty or
must pay 60 solidi; a priest has to pay double the amount.” Hefele II.
349; comp. p. 355. No Christian
was permitted by the laws of the church to sell a slave to foreign
lands, or to a Jew or heathen. Gregory I. prohibited the Jews within
the papal jurisdiction to keep Christian slaves, which he considered an
outrage upon the Christian name. Nevertheless even clergymen sometimes
sold Christian slaves to Jews. The tenth Council of Toledo (656 or 657)
complains of this practice, protests against it with Bible passages,
and reminds the Christians that “the slaves were redeemed by the blood
of Christ, and that Christians should rather buy than sell them.”343343 Hefele III. 103; comp. IV. 70. Balmes, p.
108. Individual emancipation was
constantly encouraged as a meritorious work of charity well pleasing to
God, and was made a solemn act. The master led the slave with a torch
around the altar, and with his hands on the altar pronounced the act of
liberation in such words as these: “For fear of Almighty God, and for
the care of my soul I liberate thee;” or: “In the name and for the love
of God I do free this slave from the bonds of slavery.”

Occasionally a feeble voice was raised against the
institution itself, especially from monks who were opposed to all
worldly possession, and felt the great inconsistency of convents
holding slave-property. Theodore of the Studium forbade his convent to
do this, but on the ground that secular possessions and marriage were
proper only for laymen.344344 Overbeck, l.c., p. 219. A
Synod of Chalons, held between 644 and 650, at which thirty-eight
bishops and six episcopal representatives were present, prohibited the
selling of Christian slaves outside of the kingdom of Clovis, from fear
that they might fall into the power of pagans or Jews, and he
introduces this decree with the significant words: “The highest piety
and religion demand that Christians should be redeemed entirely from
the bond of servitude.”345345 Conc. Cabilonense, can. 9: ”Pietatis est maximae et
religionis intuitus, ut captivitatis vinculum omnino a Christianis
redimatur.” The date of the Council is uncertain, see Mansi,
Conc. X. 1198; Hefele, III. 92. By
limiting the power of sale, slave-property was raised above ordinary
property, and this was a step towards abolishing this property itself
by legitimate means.

Under the combined influences of Christianity,
civilization, and oeconomic and political considerations, the slave
trade was forbidden, and slavery gradually changed into serfdom, and
finally abolished all over Europe and North America. Where the spirit
of Christ is there is liberty.

Notes.

In Europe serfdom continued till the eighteenth
century, in Russia even till 1861, when it was abolished by the Czar
Alexander II. In the United States, the freest country in the world,
strange to say, negro slavery flourished and waxed fat under the
powerful protection of the federal constitution, the fugitive
slave-law, the Southern state-laws, and “King Cotton,” until it went
out in blood (1861–65) at a cost far exceeding the
most liberal compensation which Congress might and ought to have made
for a peaceful emancipation. But passion ruled over reason,
self-interest over justice, and politics over morals and religion.
Slavery still lingers in nominally Christian countries of South
America, and is kept up with the accursed slave-trade under Mohammedan
rule in Africa, but is doomed to disappear from the bounds of
civilization.

336De Civit. Dei, 1. XIX. c. 15. ”Nomen [servus]
culpa meruit, non natura … Prima servitutis causa
peccatum est, ut homo homini conditionis vinculo subderetur quod non
fuit nisi Deo judicante, apud quem non est iniquitas.” He thinks it
will continue with the duties prescribed by the apostles, donec
transeat iniquitas, et evacuetur omnis principatus, et potestas humana,
et sit Deus omnia in omnibus..” Chrysostom taught substantially the
same views, and derived from the sin of Adam a threefold servitude and
a threefold tyranny, that of the husband over the wife, the master over
the slave, and the state over the subjects. Thomas Aquinas, the
greatest of the schoolmen, ” did not see in slavery either difference
of race or imaginary inferiority or means of government, but only a
scourge inflicted on humanity by the sins of the first man” (Balmes, p.
112). But none of these great men seems to have had an idea that
slavery would ever disappear from the earth except with sin itself.
Cessante causa, cessat effectus. See vol. III.
115-121.

337 Epist. X. 66; IX. 102. See these and other passages in
Overbeck, Verhältniss der alten Kirche zur
Sklaverei, in his
“Studien zur Gesch. der alten Kirche” (1875) p. 211 sq. Overbeck,
however, dwells too much on the proslavery sentiments of the fathers,
and underrates the merits of the church for the final abolition of
slavery.

340 Fifth Synod of Orleans, 549; Synod of Aachen, 789; Synod of
Francfurt, 794. See Hefele III. 3, 666, 691. If ordination took place
without the master’s consent, he could reclaim the
slave from the ranks of the clergy. Hefele IV. 26.

341 Hefele III. 574, 575, 611. The first example was set by
Pope Callistus (218-223), who was himself formerly a slave, and gave
the sanction of the Roman church to marriages between free Christian
ladies and slaves or lowborn men. Hippolytus, Philosoph. IX. 12
(p. 460 ed. Duncker and Schneidewin). This was contrary to Roman law,
and disapproved even by Hippolytus.

342 The 16th Synod of Toledo, 693, passed the following canon:
“If a slave works on Sunday by command of his master, the slave becomes
free, and the master is punished to pay 30 solidi. If the slave works
on Sunday without command of his master, he is whipped or must pay fine
for his skin. If a freeman works on Sunday, he loses his liberty or
must pay 60 solidi; a priest has to pay double the amount.” Hefele II.
349; comp. p. 355.